


Fluidity

by dr_zofia_bites



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner-centric, Genderfluid Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Queer Themes, Self Image, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, Self-Indulgent, betty ross (mentioned) - Freeform, genderfluid bruce, its a blink and you'll miss it thing dont worry, jennifer walters (mentioned) - Freeform, mentions of puberty, not mentioned but rest assured tony is very bisexual in this, rebecca banner (mentioned) - Freeform, supportive tony, the ship is not the main focus of the fic its mostly just There because, vague post avengers 2012 time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 06:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21175277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_zofia_bites/pseuds/dr_zofia_bites
Summary: For a long time, Bruce never really had the words to describe his gender, so he mostly ignored it. That was until he sees an article for the New York Pride parade.





	Fluidity

**Author's Note:**

> i'm genderfluid so i decided to project that onto bruce for 2500 words. I wrote this purely for myself but I guess you guys can enjoy if you want. peace out <3

There are a lot of things that are a mystery to Bruce. That’s the nature of being a scientist, after all: the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing. The fun is finding it all out. It’s a principal that has guided him throughout life, and barring a few… _green_ hiccups, it has served him well and he has no plans to abandon it anytime soon.

The only time this has failed his is… hard to explain. Unlike the other boys in school, Bruce just… never got it. What that “it” was has also been hard to describe his whole life. He never got the whole deal of “boys vs. girls”, or why people put so much emphasis on being men or women. Bruce only ever saw the reproductive differences, and even then he learned in college that being intersex was possible, so that part mattered even less.

So being interested in men as well as women (and honestly anything other and in between) was only natural. While not much the sentimental type, Bruce saw beauty in all kinds of bodies and people. But his sexuality wasn’t much a surprise. Sure, he had to keep that on the down low until recent years, but it wasn’t _surprising._

Besides not really understanding why people put so much emphasis on being a man or a woman, Bruce sometimes felt… itchy in his body. It wasn’t related to any low self esteem in regards of his appearance- despite his confusion at how Tony (and previously Betty) wanted to date him, he didn’t doubt that Tony found him physically attractive. No it was more…

It was more like his body was both too big and too small. During these weird times, Bruce would throw himself into work to distract from the feeling. If he let himself be idle too long, he would practically squirm in his seat and try and scratch at the itch all over his body. It never helped, but the distractions did. Mostly Bruce would just try to power through those episodes until they passed.

After the accident, Bruce didn’t notice if or when those episodes happened. He was too busy running from the army and trying to either cure or kill himself, battling to keep the monster inside so it didn’t come out and destroy cities.

All of that brought him to here, with the Avengers. The big scary monster he’d been trying to get rid of showed himself to just be scared and confused himself, and once he’d been taught better, Hulk turned out not to be so bad. Bruce hardly dared believe it… but he felt happy now. He was slowly forming a family with the others, he was working through stuff in therapy, he had a lovely boyfriend in the form of Tony, and he’d even reconnected with Jennifer and Betty. He was so happy that he even forgot about the odd itch. 

+++

Bruce woke up to a normal morning. Nothing was immediately out of the ordinary, so he detangled himself from the octopus that was Tony's sleeping form, and got out of bed to start the day. He brushed his teeth and hair as quick as he dared, shaved the growing stubble on his chin, and got dressed. By the time Bruce was leaving the room, Tony was just beginning to wake up.

Chuckling at the sleepy face, Bruce gave his boyfriend a kiss that promised food.

Hungry himself, Bruce got to making breakfast right away, deciding that waffles sounded good. Mixing the batter and cutting fruit passed the time until Tony walked in wearing sweatpants and his old Harvard T-shirt. It was hotter than it had any right to be.

“Morning Big Guy” Tony greets, taking a seat at the counter’s bar.

“Breakfast is almost ready, sleepy head” Bruce takes a second to lean over the counter and give the engineer a smooch in his cheek.

Tony snorts but smiles. He takes his tablet out and begins browsing the news idly, making notes to read more into a few things he sees in passing. That is when one story catches his eye.

“Hey, New York Pride is coming up soon!” he announces to his boyfriend “We should go!”

“Oh no, one thing Hulk and I agree on is no crowds” Bruce laughs “I think I’ll be fine watching it on TV here with you” he hoods his eyes to add the unsaid _“and make out with you”_ to the end.

Tony wiggled his eyebrows with a grin, which caused them both to crack up in a giggle fit. As Bruce calmed down, he finished the waffles and served both himself and Tony a plate with syrup and some fruit. He sat beside his boyfriend and reads the article along with him.

“So it’s just an announcement that it’s happening?” he asks, skim reading over Tony’s shoulder.

“That and an announcement that some new flags will be flying alongside the more well known ones” Tony shows him.

“That’s good…” idly eating his breakfast, Bruce looks at the pictures.

There are plenty of new flags that he hasn’t seen before: _aromantic, asexual, intersex, nonbinary, pansexual,_ just to name a few. One, however, catches the scientists eyes. The flag is a striped pink, white, purple, black, and blue flag. The caption under it says _“genderfluid”_. Bruce isn’t too sure why it catches his eye- maybe the bold design- but before he can ask Tony if he knows what the name means, the screen it taken up by a message from R&D.

“Whoops, we’re a little late” Tony reads the urgent message with a laugh “Come on, discoveries await us!”

Chuckling, Bruce’s mind is already shifting into science mode, and the flag that caught his eye was swiftly forgotten.

+++

Later that evening, Bruce lounges alone on the couch with his tablet. Tony is down in R&D finishing up some welding work, so Bruce took the opportunity to have a bit of quiet alone time. He’s reading up on the news casually, decompressing his brain from science so he can actually get some sleep.

An article about the New York Pride parade brings back the memory of this morning. He still didn’t know what “genderfluid” meant. The others he could figure out just fine, but this one was new. Without further delay, he goes to google to research.

_What is Genderfluid?_

The first result is of the flag, and again the striking design catches his interest. Scrolling further down, Bruce clicks on a forum post a little down the page of someone asking that same question. The replies are filled with people explaining that when someone is genderfluid, they “switch” genders sometimes. Their sense of gender isn't permanent, and changes over time- like a fluid. Sometimes they change every few hours or days, sometimes its for weeks or months at a time, and sometimes in response to different circumstances. The replies are also full of accounts of genderfluid people recounting their experiences.

> _**nexters-** for me it’s like i wake up one day, and i’m a girl, and the next, i’m a boy. Its fairly cut and dry. _  
_**PlatinumFox-** i never really felt connected to being a girl. It felt weird when people would put so much emphasis on it, and i hated being forced into typically feminin things. But as i got older, and i chose to present how i wanted, i found i liked wearing dresses occasionally, just as much as i liked being “mistaken” for a boy in my hoodies and jackets. Most of the time i feel agender or in the demi-girl/demi-boy range, but sometimes i get the strong urge to be super feminine or super masculine. Those are my firmly “male” and “female” days, and on those days i even change names! _  
_**everwillows-** on my girl days, god, feel itchy in my own body! i want boobs, but stuffing a bra helps_  
_**Scanner8Major-** TBH I’ve been considering top surgery, but I kinda wanna keep the naughty bits I got. They’re nice. Other then that, yeah, my switch times are pretty even cut. Least I don’t have to spend an hour every morning figuring out if I should go masc or fem or androgynous like my discord buddy- Godspeed to them. _  
_**UrSpiceMyLife\- @PlatnumFox** is right on the money for me, ‘cept it’s flipped._

Every single post to the thread Bruce read made his eyes widen further. It’s as if some of these people were writing down his inner most unconscious thoughts.

The times in grade school where he would just sit in confusion as the group of girls he tried to make friends with rejected him because he _“was a boy, and boys are icky”_ and not understanding why they said that, feeling so uncomfortable in the boys locker room in high school whenever they would talk about their dicks or some other puberty thing but also being uncomfortable sometimes when Jennifer talked about her period, the occasional itchy feeling he would get whenever someone called him “sir” or “mister” but not minding most other times.

He finally had words to describe the confusing instances throughout his life. Bruce mostly didn’t feel connected to being a man, but sometimes he definitely felt like one… and sometimes he felt like a woman. It was a little odd to think that, but the more Bruce rolled it around in his head, the more it stuck. He was genderfluid. It felt like a piece of himself he never knew was missing just fit into place.

“I’m genderfluid…” he says aloud and liking the sound of it.

“You’re what?”

Yelping at the sudden appearance of Tony’s voice, Bruce stands and whirls around to face his boyfriend. He stares wide eyed at the engineer, brain stalling to come up with an answer.

“Um…”

“What’s up, you look like you’ve seen a ghost” Tony jokes, trying to ease the sudden tension that's all over Bruce's face.

“I… I read about more about the new flags that are going to be at the pride parade. And one of them… I discovered something new about myself…” Bruce says softly, wringing his hands together nervously. He wants to be honest with Tony, because the man is his friend and he loves him, but a part of him is irrationally scared about what his boyfriend will think.

“Oh…?” the other man prompts, slowly walking closer. Tony looks open, his eyes reassuring.

“I’m pretty sure… I’m genderfluid”

+++

Of course, Tony took it well. Bruce really shouldn’t have doubted, but years of anxiety were hard to beat. He’d just needed a little explanation, but after, Tony had been very supportive.

Now that Bruce had actual words to put to his feelings, he could take the time to integrate this part of himself into his life. Frankly, nothing much changed. Mostly he was comfortable with how things were now. With a name for what this was, Bruce could much easier handle people insisting that being a man made him a different species or something.

But of course, the “fluid” part of genderfluid didn’t quite sink in until a few weeks later. To be fair, he had almost completely forgotten about his itchy episodes- it had been so long since he remembered having one.

+++

When Bruce woke up, he immediately wanted to go back to sleep. Already his skin was crawling, and more then anything he wanted to claw the itch out somehow. His chest felt too small and his pelvis too big. The hair all over his boy only aggravated the itch more. As Bruce squirmed around in bed to try and get comfortable enough to sleep more, it finally dawned on him what was going on.

He was a _she_ today.

Now that she had a reason, the crawling on her skin subsided some. Not much, but it was more manageable now. Bruce sat up in bed and considered her options. She could try and go back to sleep for the day and wait it out until she felt more masculine. She could also throw herself into work and just ignore this like she had done so many times in the past.

Or she could… embrace this.

It was something Bruce was trying to do more, embracing the parts of herself she had previously either ignored or hated. And this counted as something she’d previously ignored, so in an effort to make her therapist and family proud, Bruce got out of bed and went to the bathroom to get ready.

Looking at herself in the mirror felt… _strange._ It was her face, the same one she had yesterday, but it felt… different now. The stubble would have to go, so Bruce got to shaving it off, more so than normal. She kept going until her chin and cheeks were smooth- the only thing left being very tiny peach fuzz. She remembered Betty had some too, as well as Jennifer. It made her feel content to be like the women in her life, so Bruce left it be.

Next, Bruce wet her fingers and brushed her eyebrows into a less bushy state, making them neat and shaped. Bruce would have to remember to get some makeup stuff, and learn how to use it. But she always liked learning new things, this would probably be fun. Maybe she could even try wearing it on her man days.

It was when Bruce was studying her features in the mirror, trying to see what else she could to to feel more feminine and comfortable in her body, that an image flashed in her mind.

It was mom, suddenly, looking back in the mirror.

Bruce gasped and backed away, causing the illusion to break. But now that the connection was made, she couldn’t stop the thoughts from happening. She had always bitterly thought she looked more like her dad- harsher features typical on men made all the harsher by the elder Banner’s temper and drinking. It was one reason Bruce tried no to grow facial hair, in an effort to not look like her father. The dark thoughts never went away though- almost every time she caught her face in the mirror she heard her father's gravelly voice.

But she’s been working on her mental health a lot recently. And with this new yet old part of herself having come to light, Bruce can suddenly only see her mother’s features. Her full lips, her eye shape, the curly hair with warm undertones. All of those features in this new context made Bruce tear up, joy swirling around along with the bittersweet feeling she got whenever thinking about mom.

Collecting herself and wiping away the tears, Bruce smiled at herself in the mirror for the first time in years.

+++

She was in the middle of making breakfast when Tony walked in. He smiled broadly and kissed her cheek in greeting.

“Good morning, Brucie bear, how did you sleep?” Tony sat at the counter and snagged an apple slice to eat.

“Hm, not bad” she replied with a light smile “And today it’s Becca, by the way” sharing her “girl name” filled Becca with anxiety, but this was important. She wanted, for the first time in practically forever, to be happy. This would be apart of that, and she hoped her irrational fear would stay just that- irrational. 

“Alrighty then, Becca bear” Tony chuckled, accepting and understanding easily “I like it, it suits you” he complimented.

Becca blushed and giggled, leaning over and kissing Tony on the lips in thanks and feeling so very happy.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been my experience with being genderfluid but it is not the only way to be genderfluid. if your experiences differ from mine you're still valid and i love you <3  
(btw yeah my pronouns are mostly she and they but sometimes i go by he and change my name when i'm feeling it)
> 
> EDIT (8/15/2020) :  
soooo, just a heads up.... i'm actually agender??? yeah. some soul searching led to this revelation, and i think this fic was helpful in me reaching this conclusion. I am of course leaving this story up because I still love it and I'm aware that many others love it too <3
> 
> thank you to everyone who enjoyed this fic as well as anyone who discovered they were gendefluid through reading this!
> 
> (and btw, i use any pronouns still ;D )


End file.
